The present invention is related to an image search device and a method for searching image.
As a result of digital archiving of television footage and increased popularity of video distribution services on the internet, there is an increased need for searching and classifying large scale image data at high speed. Also, there is increased expectation for analysis of surveillance footage accumulated for security purposes. Due to the difficulty involved in manually adding text information to large numbers of images, an image search technique using feature values in the image is being sought.
Large scale and high speed similar image search systems have been put into practical use up to now, and a technique has been proposed in which, by extracting image feature values in advance and putting them in a database, images that are visually similar to a query image are searched at high speed.
JP 2010-250529 A (Patent Document 1) is a disclosure of the background art of the present technical field. Patent Document 1 indicates (see abstract) that “An image search device includes: an image database; a search request reception means that receives a query image; a similar image search means that extracts a similar image that is similar to the query image from among images recorded in the image database; and a search result display means that arranges similar images around the query image and displays in the display means search results in which the query image and the similar images are linked. If a new query image is received by the search request reception means, the search result display means maintains the linked display of search results previously displayed in the display means while adding the search results from the new query image to the original search results and displaying them in the display means.”